Bolivia starts too high to rush. Take the first day slowly.
Which Uyuni jeep run actually stops for the mirror, and which ones drive through it. What a cable car afternoon over La Paz costs. Whether the salt flats are worth three days or one. Reviews of the tours you can book across Bolivia.
A cable car over La Paz, a jeep on the salt, the road down to the jungle.
The four bookings most Bolivian itineraries end up hanging off. What each costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The landing dayLa Paz and El Alto: Cable Car Rides and Walking TourEl Alto to the valley floor by cable car, then the streets on foot. Gentle enough for a first afternoon at this altitude, and it costs less than lunch.
02The day on the saltSalt Flats Highlights Jeep Tour with LunchA jeep out of Uyuni with lunch on the crust. The one day that has to work, so give it the clearest forecast you have.
03The famous descentMountain Bike Down the World’s Most Dangerous RoadThree and a half thousand metres down from La Cumbre to Yolosa, on a road that lost its traffic to a bypass. Book a good outfit, not a cheap one.
04The night outCholitas Wrestling Tickets and TransferCholitas in bowler hats throwing each other around a ring in El Alto, with the transfer up the hill included. Runs on set nights only.
Nothing else in Bolivia looks like the ten thousand square kilometres at Uyuni.
Between roughly December and April a shallow film of water sits on the crust and the whole plain reads as sky. The rest of the year it is dry white hexagons you can drive flat out across. Different photographs, different tours, and the jeeps behave differently on each.
One day out and back, three days to the lagoons, or keep going into Chile.
This is the real Uyuni decision, and it sets the rest of the itinerary. Three lengths of trip, what it costs to get on each, and where you end up standing at the end of it.
La Paz, Uyuni, Titicaca, and the long way down to Santa Cruz.
A capital stacked up the sides of a canyon, a salt flat that turns into a mirror after rain, an inland sea at the Peruvian border, a white colonial city and a lowland run out to the plains. Six starting points, and the best day out in each.
La Paz is a city you travel through vertically.
Everything in La Paz →
Ten cable car lines carry commuters over a canyon that drops six hundred metres from El Alto to the southern suburbs. Ride one, walk the witches’ market, then come back after dark. These three carry more travellers than anything else in the city.
Cable car lines, then the streets
The teleférico does the hard work while your body is still working out the altitude. Red, yellow and green lines stack up the canyon wall, and the walking that follows is downhill.
Moon Valley, twenty minutes from town
Erosion has cut the clay south of the city into a field of spires, with a boardwalk threaded through it. Most trips bolt it onto Killi Killi or the Valle de las Animas on the way back.
Down the Yungas road on a bike
Sixty-four kilometres of gravel cut into a cliff, dropping into subtropical forest. The traffic went to the new highway years ago, so the risk now is your brakes and your guide. Pay for both.
Bolivia’s most popular days out.
Every Bolivian tour we have reviewed →The tours more travellers take than anything else in the country, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
La Paz and El Alto: Cable Car Rides and Walking Tour
Meet at San Francisco Church for a 150-minute tour through La Paz and El Alto. Walk to the Witches’ Market, San Pedro Square, Jaen Street, and Plaza Murillo, then ride several cable-car lines for wide city views. English and Spanish guides include Carolina, Luis, Marcia, Fernando, and others.
From · $10
Read our review →
2
Full Day Trip to Copacabana and Isla del Sol
from $59
3
Mountain Bike Down the World’s Most Dangerous Road
from $145
4
Cholitas Wrestling Tickets and Transfer
from $25
5
Uyuni Salt Flat Tour & Overnight Roundtrip Bus
from $275
6
Charquini Mountain Guided Hike
from $39
7
Cable Car, Cemetery, Shaman, and El Alto Tour
from $20
8
Valle de las Animas, Moon Valley, & Killi Killi Tour
from $85
On the salar the best hour starts when the jeeps should be heading home.
There is no horizon out there and no light pollution either, so the sun goes down into its own reflection and the Milky Way comes up over a white floor. The tours that stay out for it cost a little more and get back late. Take the late one.
Every sunset and stargazing trip →
What a day out in Bolivia actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. Bolivia is the cheapest country on this continent to travel in, and the numbers below show it.
Cable car afternoons, city walks, Moon Valley, the wrestling in El Alto.
The full-day standards: the salt flats in a day, Copacabana and Isla del Sol, the Yungas descent.
Multi-day jeep circuits, the crossing into Chile, guided climbs on the Cordillera Real.
- 1Uyuni Salt Flat Tour & Overnight Roundtrip Busfrom $275
- 2Uyuni tour express from La Paz by busfrom $269
- 33-Day Tour to Salt Flats and Lagoonsfrom $370
Titicaca is an inland sea at the altitude of a small aircraft.
Copacabana sits on a bay three hours out of La Paz, and the boats leave from there for Isla del Sol, where the Inca creation story starts and there are no cars. Most people do it in a long day; it is better as an overnight.
- 1Full Day Trip to Copacabana and Isla del Solfrom $59
- 2Titicaca, Copacabana, and Isla del Sol Day-Tripfrom $100
- 3Private Tiwanaku and Titicaca Day Trip from La Pazfrom $200
Three things that only happen in Bolivia.
Plenty of countries have deserts, cities and mountains. A mirror the size of Jamaica, a wrestling ring of women in bowler hats, and a cliff road you descend on a mountain bike are harder to find elsewhere.
The Uyuni Mirror
The salar is the dried bed of a prehistoric lake, flat to within a metre across a hundred kilometres, which is why satellites are calibrated against it. After the summer rain a few centimetres of water sit on top and refuse to drain, and the reflection is close to perfect. Jeeps still drive on it, slowly, throwing a wake.
- 1Uyuni Salt Flat Tour & Overnight Roundtrip Bus★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 327 reviews
- 23-Day Tour to Salt Flats and Lagoons★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 168 reviews
- 3Red Lagoon & Uyuni Salt Flats 3-Day Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 160 reviews
Cholitas Wrestling
Aymara women in layered skirts and bowler hats fight a staged, theatrical version of lucha libre in a hall up in El Alto. The bowler hat arrived by accident, a shipment of hats too small for the European railway workers they were meant for, and stayed for a century. Nights are fixed, so the ticket is a diary decision.
- 1La Paz and El Alto: Cable Car Rides and Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 790 reviews
- 2Cable Car, Cemetery, Shaman, and El Alto Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 218 reviews
- 3Private Salt Flat Full-Day Tour Including The Cemetery of Trains and Lunch from Uyuni★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 73 reviews
The Death Road
The old road from La Paz to Coroico is a single gravel lane cut into a cliff with no barrier and a drop of several hundred metres. It earned its name while it was carrying trucks; a bypass took those away in 2006, and it now carries bicycles. You start in fleece above the snow line and finish in a T-shirt among banana trees.
- 1Mountain Bike Down the World’s Most Dangerous Road★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 386 reviews
- 2World’s Most Dangerous Road “Private” Mountain Biking Trip★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 7 reviews
- 33-Day Biking Tour Death Road & Uyuni Salt Flats★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 4 reviews
Four Bolivian bookings that will not wait.
Most of this country can be arranged the night before from a hostel desk in La Paz. These four run on fixed nights, weather windows, border timetables and a body that needs several days to catch up.
- 01Climbing Huayna PotosíA six-thousand-metre summit needs guides, gear and several days of acclimatising first. Nobody books this on the morning of.
- 02Cholitas Wrestling Tickets and TransferThe fights run on set nights in El Alto. Land on the wrong day of the week and there is nothing to see.
- 03Uyuni Salt Flats & San Pedro de Atacama 3-Day TourIt ends in another country. The jeep circuit crosses at a remote border post on a timetable, and it is one way.
- 04Mountain Bike Down the World’s Most Dangerous RoadOne departure a day, bikes sized to the rider, and the good operators fill first. The cheap ones are cheap for a reason.
La Paz airport is at 4,050 metres. Your first day is already spoken for.
You land higher than almost anywhere else you have flown into, and the standard mistake is booking a mountain for day two. Give the first forty-eight hours to things that stay low, sit down or move slowly, then go up. Coca tea, no alcohol, and a soup called sopa de maní.
The canyon city keeps its best days within an hour of the centre.
Ruins on the altiplano, clay spires south of the suburbs, a market of dried llama foetuses and herbal cures, and the road down to the coffee farms. None of it needs more than a morning.
By place — altiplano, valleys and lowlands
La Paz, Titicaca, Uyuni, Sucre: the run almost everybody does first.
The newest Bolivian tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Uyuni tour express from Sucre by bus (round trip)
Read our review →
Salar de Uyuni and San Pedro de Atacama 3-Day Tour
Read our review →
3-Days Salt Flats and Desert Adventure Tour with Food
Read our review →
2-day tour to the salt flat and altiplanic lagoons
Read our review →
Salar de Uyuni 1 day + photo session + Sunset (English)
Read our review →
Roundtrip to the Uyuni Salt Flat and the Colored Lagoons
Read our review →
Private Tiwanaku and Titicaca Day Trip from La Paz
Read our review →